THE BREEDS OF HORSES. 247 



HACKNEYS. 



The word Hackney has long been used in 

 England in a sense synonymous with the term 

 roadster as used in this country; but latterly 

 it has been adopted as the specific name of a 

 breed of horses deservedly popular in Great 

 Britain, and rapidly growing in favor in the 

 United States. To write the history of the 

 development of this breed would be to write a 

 history of horse-breeding in Norfolk and the 

 adjacent counties of England for the last one 

 hundred and fifty years. But Mr. Euren, the 

 compiler of the English Hackney Stud Book, 

 dates the real beginning of the true English 

 Hackney breed with the advent of the Shales 

 or Shields horse, the "Original Shales" of the 

 stud book, foaled about 1760. This horse was 

 got by Blaze, a son of the famous race horse 

 Flying Childers, and his dam is spoken of as 

 "a strong, common mare." 



The claim of the "Original Shales" to dis- 

 tinction rests chiefly in the fact that he was the 

 sire of the famous horses Scot Shales and 

 Driver, both said to have been remarkably 

 game and fast trotters. Scot Shales is said by 

 the historian John Lawrence to have been " the 

 first trotting stallion of eminence of which we 

 have any account." He was kept for service 

 chiefly in Lincolnshire, and in 1772 was adver- 



